"
But now, cousin, this tribulation of the Turk: If he so persecute
us for the faith that those who will forsake their faith shall keep
their goods, and those shall lose their goods who will not leave
their faith--lo, this manner of persecution shall try them like a
touchstone. For it shall show the feigned from the true-minded, and
it shall also teach them who think they mean better than they do
indeed, better to discern themselves. For there are some who think
they mean well, while they frame themselves a conscience, and ever
keep still a great heap of superfluous substance by them, thinking
ever still that they will bethink themselves upon some good deed on
which they will well bestow it once--or else that their executors
shall! But now, if they lie not unto themselves, but keep their
goods for any good purpose to the pleasure of God indeed, then
shall they, in this persecution, for the pleasure of God in keeping
his faith, be glad to depart from them.
And therefore, as for all these things--the loss, I mean, of all
these outward things that men call the gifts of fortune--this is,
methinketh, in this Turk's persecution for the faith, consolation
great and sufficient: Every man who hath them either setteth by
them for the world or for God. He who setteth by them for the world
hath, as I have showed you, little profit by them to the body and
great harm unto the soul.
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